Andrea Stella, Team Principal: "Following the Las Vegas Grand Prix, we were found in breach of Article 3.5.9 of the Technical Regulations, which requires a minimum of 9mm skid thickness. Car 4 was found in breach by a maximum of 0.12mm of the rearmost skid and Car 81 by a maximum of 0.26mm of the rearmost skid.
"During the race, both cars experienced unexpected, high levels of porpoising not seen in the Practice sessions, which led to excessive contact with the ground. We are investigating the reasons for this behaviour of the car, including the effect of accidental damage sustained by both cars, which we found after the race, and that led to an increase of movement of the floor.
"As the FIA noted, the breach was unintentional, there was no deliberate attempt to circumvent the regulations, and mitigating circumstances also existed.
"We apologise to Lando and Oscar for the loss of points today, at a critical time in their Championship campaigns after two strong performances from them all weekend. As a team, we also apologise to our partners and fans, whose support means so much.
"While this outcome is extremely disappointing, we remain fully focused on the last two races of the season."
Laurent Mekies: "Everyone in the Team and back in Milton Keynes can be proud. The car was fast at a track where we struggled a bit last year and this weekend no one had time to properly prepare because Thursday's practice was somewhat disturbed, as was FP3. The car was fast, our tyre management was up to the job and our execution was very strong. When Max needed to push, he did and was able to bring more to the table. This is a race like no other with the low temperatures and the track layout and tonight, Max and the Team mastered it. As for the start, Max is unbeatable when it comes to this sort of move, so we are no longer surprised! But there were a few critical moments in the race, when George pitted while we and Lando stayed out, but everyone managed it to perfection. As for Yuki, we paid the price for what happened yesterday. Today, we made it, a win is a win, so now we will reset and look ahead to Qatar with the same objective of extracting everything from our package."
Immediately after the start there were a few collisions in the middle of the pack, with Fernando Alonso touching Charles, forcing him wide, so that the Ferrari driver lost one position. The majority of drivers, including Leclerc, started on the Medium tyres, but Lewis, starting from the back, lined up on Hards. The Englishman then took advantage of the midfield chaos to move up as high as 12th by lap 2.
Earlier, on lap 5, Charles passed Oliver Bearman to take seventh place and he was 5th on lap 15, having passed Oscar Piastri and Isack Hadjar. Alex Albon misjudged his breaking and clipped Lewis on lap 13, luckily with no significant consequences for the Brit. On lap 24 Charles pitted for Hards rejoining ninth, ahead of Carlos Sainz. 5 laps later Lewis pitted for Mediums, back on track in tenth place. For the final part of the race Charles was sixth, stuck in a train with Kimi Antonelli and Piastri, not being able to overtake, partly because of graining. Lewis grabbed the final point for tenth place.
Fred Vasseur: Lewis had a great start from P20, recovering very well. It's true that none of us really knew what to expect from the tyres and we were surprised to see Antonelli able to do 48 laps with the Hard when some other cars were struggling. The difference was that Kimi was always in clean air, whereas if you follow someone, it damages the tyres and has a huge impact on your race. So we recovered well, but it was not enough. We had good pace today, but Charles' aero choice meant it was very difficult for him to overtake. It's true he was pushing "like an animal" as he said on the radio. When the others began to struggle on tyres he was able to overtake, but later it became difficult. Now there are still two races to go and our target is still to try and win a race before the end of the season.
George Russell finished third and Kimi Antonelli fifth in Saturday's Las Vegas Grand Prix. Starting P4 and P17 respectively, both drivers gained places to add a solid 25 points to the team's overall count in the battle for P2. George ran a conventional Medium-Hard one-stop; he gained two places on the opening lap but had to cede a position back to the McLaren of Lando Norris in the second stint. He managed his final stint to bring home P3 and his ninth podium of the season.
Kimi meanwhile gained a remarkable 12 places from his P17 starting position with a brilliant drive. He started on the Soft tyre, switched to the Hard tyre at the end of lap two, and ran that to the end. He held off Oscar Piastri on the road whilst running P4 but dropped behind the McLaren due to a five-second time penalty picked up for the minutest of movements before the lights went out. Nevertheless, his pace on significantly older rubber saw him gap both Carlos Sainz and the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc to take P5.
The team maintains its 32-point advantage over Red Bull Racing for P2 in the Constructors' Championship heading to the penultimate race of the season in Qatar.
Toto Wolff, Team Principal & CEO: The stopwatch never lies so today seems like a fair result. Many people had labelled us as favourites after winning here last year but we knew that a repeat performance of such dominance was going to be unlikely 12 months on. We come away from here with another good haul of points for the championship though and that is always the aim.
George was pushing early in both stints to try and overtake Verstappen for the lead. That likely asked a lot of the tyre which we suffered with later in the stint. That, coupled with the pace of the McLaren, made it impossible for him to resist Norris but he did a good job to manage his pace to the end and bring home the podium. Kimi meanwhile did a brilliant job to push from P17 all the way to P4 on the road and P5 after the penalty was applied. We can only imagine what he would have done today if he was starting nearer the front. Nevertheless, it was another good performance building on several strong weekends that he has put together recently.
Andrew Shovlin, Trackside Engineering Director: We'd hoped that both drivers would be able to move forward from our qualifying positions of P4 and P17 so we can be satisfied with P3 and P5 at the end of the race. George didn't quite have the pace to challenge Verstappen or Norris; his tyres started to drop earlier in the first stint and from that point it was more of a case of guaranteeing the podium. He was managing the tyres but even so, still suffered with some graining but when he pushed on the last two laps, the tyres and the pace improved. We'll go through the data to understand if we were actually making matters worse by doing so much management.
Kimi had a great race considering his start position. We knew starting on the Soft and stopping early was a risk but if the Hard tyre held on to the finish, it was our best chance to get him into good points. We took the opportunity presented by the early Virtual Safety Car and from there he drove brilliantly to keep his tyres in good shape, whilst making some critical overtakes.
There are clearly areas we can improve on from this weekend. We had potential to qualify better, and we need to understand why George was suffering from worse degradation than Kimi, but overall it was a good recovery and a useful haul of points in our fight for P2 in the championship.
Andy Cowell, CEO & Team Principal: "A difficult evening in Las Vegas, starting on lap one when Lance was taken out of the race by Bortoleto. There was significant damage to Lance's car and he had to retire. Fernando also had a painful opening lap, picking up front wing damage which cost him track position and performance for the rest of the race. Thereafter, we executed a single-stop race, making the undercut work on Bearman, but missed the pace to hold him off during the second stint. It's onwards now to Qatar next week where we will hope to be more competitive."
Flavio Briatore: "Today both our drivers, through no fault of their own, were caught up in a chaotic start to the race which resulted in significant damage to the rear of both cars. Pierre's race was completely ruined by an overambitious move by another driver in Turn 1 and he had a big loss of downforce as a result of the damage. Franco too suffered contact and damage which meant it was an uphill battle for the team for the whole race where we ended far from the points. While this circuit is a unique challenge with the conditions, we now head to Qatar, a track with many high-speed corners, which could suit our package better than recent events."
MoneyGram Haas F1 Team finished with Esteban Ocon 11th, and Oliver Bearman 12th, at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, held Saturday night at the Las Vegas Strip Circuit.
Ocon took the start from 13th position on Pirelli P Zero Yellow medium tires and slotted into 12th place, before moving into 11th after a problem for Liam Lawson. The Frenchman pitted on lap 27, taking on White hard tires, and emerged in 13th, before overhauling the Aston Martin of Fernando Alonso. Ocon passed teammate Bearman on track for 11th place and gave chase to the Scuderia Ferrari of Lewis Hamilton for the final point, but fell just 1.2 seconds shy of the seven-time world champion after 50 laps of racing.
Bearman started from 14th on the grid, also on medium tires, and surged up to seventh through a chaotic opening lap. The British rookie was shuffled back down to the lower reaches of the top 10 before pitting on lap 17 for hard tires, emerging in the thick of the midfield fight, before ceding track position to teammate Ocon. Bearman followed the sister VF-25 home to take 12th at the checkered flag.
MoneyGram Haas F1 Team maintains eighth place in the Constructors' Championship on 70 points.
Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal: "Obviously, with the lack of running in FP2 and a wet qualifying session, it was a very tricky race to read in terms of tire degradation, but I think we reacted pretty well. We executed a one-stop strategy, and ultimately, it was our qualifying position - not getting everything out of it in Q2 - and a slight lack of pace that meant we finished just outside of the points. It's disappointing, but if we can finish P11 and P12 in a less competitive race, that gives us good motivation for the next two. I'd like to think we'll be more competitive, will qualify better, and have some strong races."
James Vowles, Team Principal: Well done to Carlos, P7 was where the car was today pace-wise and he got everything out of it. Clean execution and great to see the gap that we were able to pull to the rest of the midfield. With Alex, a very difficult race for him. The radio failed on the laps to the grid and despite numerous efforts we were not able to reinstate it which meant we had no communication with him. After he got caught up in incidents, we decided the best course of action was to retire the car rather than risk any safety issues. We have got two races to go, a slight build in the points gap for fifth in the Championship and we need to keep doing that.
Max Verstappen is the first driver to win more than once in Las Vegas, taking a commanding victory in the Nevadan night, to add to his 2023 win, thus keeping his Drivers' World Championship title hopes alive going into the final two rounds of the season. Championship leader Lando Norris came home second for McLaren, having lost the pole advantage to the Dutchman after the start. At the chequered flag, he was almost 21 seconds behind Verstappen. Joining them on the podium was last year's winner, George Russell for Mercedes. For Verstappen, who started from second, this was his sixth win of the season and the 69th of his career. For Red Bull Racing this is win number 128. While Verstappen is theoretically in with a chance of winning the Drivers' World Championship title, it is only a slim one. With two Grands Prix and a Sprint remaining, Norris leads on 408 points, 18 head of his McLaren team-mate Oscar Piastri, while Verstappen trails the leader by 42.
The majority of drivers started on the Medium tyre, with five drivers, the Saubers of Nico Hulkenberg and Gabriel Bortoleto Alex Albon (Williams), Franco Colapinto (Alpine) and Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) lining up on the Hard. Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes), later penalised for a jumped start, was the only driver to start on the Softs.
When the lights went out, Norris was over-aggressive in defending his pole position, running wide at the first corner, which allowed Verstappen and Russell, who got ahead of Carlos Sainz, to move ahead of the McLaren. At half distance - lap 25 of 50 - Verstappen had enough of a gap to pit to switch from Medium to Hard, a compound which proved to be very consistent and still emerge ahead of second placed Russell. Both compounds allowed drivers to push for the whole race, confirming that a one stop, with Medium and Hard was the quickest route to the flag.
The top eight all finished on Hard, while Nico Hulkenberg in ninth was the best of those who did the reverse strategy. Antonelli made up an impressive 13 places to cross the line in fourth place, but a 5 second penalty for jumping the start dropped him down just one place to fifth. The Italian completed all but two of the 50 lap total on the C3, as did Alpine's Pierre Gasly who finished 15th. Esteban Ocon who finished 11th in the Haas, went furthest on the Medium, completing 27 laps on the C4.
Mario Isola: "The night time race in Las Vegas ran very much as had been expected going into the Grand Prix. We witnessed what was effectively a one-stop race, with the Medium and Hard completing the 50 laps between them. Graining was very limited today, seen on only a few cars and then mainly on the front axle. The only useful reference for comparison, at least for the yellow compound, was with FP1, when the tyres had been much more affected by it.
"The decisive factor was probably track condition, the surface being much cleaner than on Friday. Last year, with similar temperatures, the drivers had to make two stops, precisely because of graining whereas this year, even without looking after the tyres, they managed to extend their stints. This is further confirmation of the improved mechanical properties of the current compounds, which indeed we've seen throughout the season.
"Max Verstappen's win, taking the lead shortly after the lights went out, gives us an exceptionally close end to the season, with only two races left to run: the Drivers' championship is yet to be decided, as is the battle in the Constructors' behind McLaren."
